


Four-Fifths Brandy

by Thimblerig



Series: The Lion and the Serpent [40]
Category: The Musketeers (2014)
Genre: Author's Favorite, Consent Issues, Dialogue Heavy, M/M, Prequel, Relationship Negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-14
Updated: 2017-07-14
Packaged: 2018-12-01 21:17:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11494938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thimblerig/pseuds/Thimblerig
Summary: You swallow hard and say, “You're very persistent tonight.” He frowns, and you clarify, “We've had this conversation before.”“Do you ever say yes?”“You haven't asked me when you're sober.”





	Four-Fifths Brandy

**Author's Note:**

> There's some discussion of and reference to consent that is dubious for one reason or another.

“You want to bed me!” Athos says in startlement.

“Yes,” you answer, leaning against the grubby plaster of his bedchamber.

He lifts one strong, fine-boned hand off the carved arm of his chair and gestures negligently. “Have at it, then.”

“I thank you kindly for the offer, _m’sieur,_ but tonight I must decline.”

He lifts a skinny-necked bottle and drinks from it, the vulnerable line of his bare throat working around the swallow of liquid. “Am I not beautiful?” he asks, letting the bottle hang unnoticed from his fingers.

“Oh, very much,” you assure him cheerfully. Though, ‘beautiful’ is not the best word. Tonight Athos reclines, doublet unbuttoned, half regal and half dissolute, in the dark wooden chair that he hasn’t quite managed to pawn. The moon, the lover’s boon companion, is bright tonight and paints his features in white and stark shadow. He’s drunk, so very drunk - past the one-fifth brandy that is his everyday life; the two-fifths hunched irascible and sour-tongued in any of a hundred nasty little establishments worn into familiarity; past the marvellous three-fifths wherein he declaims Ovid and Cicero and Catullus and Sappho to all comers - so very scathing about your Church-trained tongue following him. Now his blood runs four-fifths brandy, which means a lot of things.

Athos tilts his head back and eyes you curiously, every movement born of an innate strength brewed with exquisitely trained precision and distilled by grace. You see him like this in the training yard sometimes, more often in a hard won fight. When he forgets to hate himself, ‘beautiful’ is not the right word. (You try your tongue around ‘glorious’.) Yes, you want to bed him.

“How long have you wanted me?”

“Hm,” you think back. “Seven months, I believe it is.”

“I met you seven months ago,” he points out reasonably.

You grin at him. “I know what I like.”

“How did I not notice this?” he asks in bewilderment, drinking again from his bottle.

“I really could not say, my dear Athos. I haven’t been subtle about my wishes.” (It’s become a Regimental joke, if a quietly told one. Even the notoriously chaste Cornet, whose remonstrations generally involve invocations of hellfire for luxuriousness, has asked you seriously if you might not deserve better than a habitual drunkard. You thanked him for his concern. Porthos just laughs at you, loud and long.) 

He gestures, then, peremptory. “Come.”

You laugh in his face.

“Why not? You want it, and I offered.”

“I decline to be a mistake born of your inebriation.” He furrows his eyebrows, sceptical bordering on annoyed, and you add, “besides, drunk as you are there’s no egg in your pudding. Your banner would not crack in a stiff breeze. Your upsy, Athos, would be a downsy.”

“That needn’t stop you.” 

“You think I should just bend you over the back of the bed and bugger you? Slake my lusts in your limp body? Athos,” you say with growing heat, “you don't know me as -” 

He cuts you off with a finger flick. “Hands and mouth,” he says simply. “If you tell me how.”

You stare at him. “Why?”

“I like you,” he answers simply.

“I like you too, Athos.”

He smiles, then, so very sweetly that you have a desperate craving to be on the other side of the room, feeling his scarred lips curl under your fingertips. 

You swallow hard and say, “You're very persistent tonight.” He frowns, and you clarify, “We've had this conversation before.”

“Do you ever say yes?”

“You haven't asked me when you're sober.”

Perhaps he will, someday. The seeds of it are in the ground, surely, the flower in the bud? You could please him, you know. Even if the whole of what drives him is simple curiosity, or friendship, or a craving for gentle touch, you know how to make such an encounter good for him. 

Athos drains the bottle, head tipped back, then lets it fall, rolling in forgotten circles. (Its contents were mostly water - _that’s_ how drunk he is, not to notice.) He snaps his fingers and you go to him.

He smiles down at you, tender, as you kneel and wrap your hands around his calf. You ease the heavy leather boot off, as gently as you can, and the other. His hands trace your face, curious, exploring the bone and muscle and stubble of another man, trusting as you ease his doublet off his shoulders and free his arms. Athos melts into you as you raise him up, his stiffness transmuted by the brandy and the moonlight into a pliant, easy strength.

“Aramis,” he breathes, as you lay him down on the bed. “Aramis.”

With care you disentangle his grasping fingers from your hair, your collar. You drop a quick kiss between his brows and rise while he’s distracted. To the hurt in his eyes you say, apologetically, “Ask me again when you’re sober.”

Perhaps he will, perhaps not: a flower opens on its own time or not at all. And in truth, you’re rather fond of the dry and prickly bush that is Athos of the everyday. You pull the blanket over him and stay until his eyes close and his breathing deepens into true sleep.

**

(five years later)

“You’re sad again,” Athos says, eyes glittering in the fall of the moonlight. It is a different chair, not so nice, but he sits in it like a king.

“Yes,” you say simply, “I am sad.”

“You keep hiding it.”

“People don’t like me when I’m sad,” you answer, smiling. It’s true: not even you, a forgiving sort of a fellow, can stand your own company when you’re moping.

(And why should you be sad, in truth? You saw your s- the dauphin tonight, through an open door, in little scraps of time caught up in an otherwise busy evening. He was healthy, and peaceful, and safe. That is enough, surely? Your companion enjoyed her evening, also, pleased and glowing when the pair of you were done. You’re glad Marguerite is enjoying herself. You hope she marries someone nice, in time. You hope, y - you’ve never felt so much a member of your mother’s trade as when you are with Marguerite _and that isn’t fair_ \- you hope the governess finds someone who loves her. In time. You hope that.)

“I always like you,” Athos tells you, very seriously.

“Oh, my friend.”

Athos snaps his fingers by his knee.

“Am I a dog?” you inquire.

“You are Aramis.”

You go to him, and he holds out his arms. He wraps them around you and lets you weep.

**Author's Note:**

>  _and scathing about your Church-trained tongue following him there_ \- ‘Church’ Latin is pronounced a bit differently from the original Classical variety and there are grammar issues. I feel that Aramis’ formal teaching was very seminary and then he branched out on his own, which most people don’t catch but Athos, exquisitely educated as he was, does. (His snarking about Aramis’ Latin comes from the book.) Sappho, a Greek lady, wrote most of her love-poems directed to a female inamorata.


End file.
